LUNACY ll Mattheo Riddle x Reader

64. ʀᴇᴍᴏʀꜱᴇ

i was gonna wait a whole week to update, just to let myself bask in the satisfaction of ending things off on a massive cliff hanger, but several of you guys have been coming after me with so many cheery lil threats that i thought i might as well give in :)

very pleased with the number of curses i managed to receive from all of you in the last chapter, i believe that's a new record for me; also very impressed with how creative you readers can get with your screeching and threatening <33

Mattheo's Pov

Eternal torment. That was what his father had described it as. Unbearable, unending, eternal torment.

The rest of his soul had already left the world. Only one fragment still clung on for dear life, clawing at whatever roots it could as the wails of the Damned tore him apart. Mattheo had never endured such physical pain. But the height of the agony was nothing compared to the realization that hit him when his vision cleared.

He was unnervingly serene as he took in a deep breath. The air felt... Different, somehow. Tainted. But not necessarily in a bad way. Next to him, a boy and a girl sat clutching each other, staring at him in horror. Their eyes were red and swollen. The girl's tears were mixed in with specks of dried blood.

It took a moment longer for his memories to catch up with him. They started from the beginning. The orphanage in Muggle London. The boys there had made it a habit to call him a freak for how he 'talked' to the garden snakes. They'd taken fun in locking him up in broom cupboards, knowing how much he hated being in the dark. He'd always managed to find his way out, though. The bolted door would always open for him, almost like magic.

Magic that he could've used to hurt those that hurt him. But he never did.

His eleventh birthday. A tall, stern looking woman with ashen hair had introduced herself to him as the Deputy Headmistress for a special school. Mattheo had thought she'd come to take him away. The boys there were always spreading stories about him. He'd panicked, rambled on as he tried to tell her that none of what she'd heard was true, even though that probably wasn't the case. She'd then turned into a cat in front of his very eyes.

Mattheo's first year at Hogwarts had been endurable, but hard nonetheless. He'd quickly learned that being thrown into the makings of a fairytale didn't at all guarantee him a spot as the hero of the story. Yes, everyone knew his name, just as they did Harry Potter's. And just as they knew to glorify everything the Gryffindor boy did, they knew to vilify every last one of Mattheo's innocent actions.

But Mattheo never held it against him. If anything, he felt personal guilt at how Potter, too, had grown up an orphan. Though in Potter's case, parents were a thing he longed for, while Mattheo couldn't be more grateful that the infamous Dark Lord had disappeared from the world for good.

It took the Slytherins in his year less than a week to ruthlessly and efficiently create various cliques for themselves. Parkinson and Greengrass led the group of rich and popular pureblood girls. Davis and Bulstrode headed the remaining awkward outcasts. Blaise Zabini, ever the popular one, floated from one friend group to the next with natural ease. It was an ability that Mattheo envied, but such jealousy was nothing compared to what he felt for Draco Malfoy and his friends.

Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Nott. Mattheo had watched them from afar, entranced at how well the four of them seemed to know where they belonged. All boys from powerful families, families that Mattheo would later learn had managed to avoid imprisonment by lying and bribing their way to safety. If he'd been a bit more attentive, he might've taken note of how flimsy their so-called friendship actually was. But all that his eleven year-old self could see were a group of boys who could rely on each other without much care for the reputations of their respective families.